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Fight new attack on the UK solar industry!

Government cuts to the solar industry already triggered over 12,000 job losses. By contrast in the USA, ten years of a stable tax credit system for the solar industry has created 260,000 jobs. Now, the Treasury is planning a huge tax increase on the 23,000 commercial rooftop installations in England — thousands of offices, schools and hospitals, many of which installed solar to help save money on their energy bills. You can sign the Petition here – over 175,000 people have so far. Because government plans to revise business rates from April 2017 could leave businesses and schools that install solar panels with a tax bill that’s up to 8 times higher.

Industry experts are raising the alarm that such a sudden and huge tax rise would prove catastrophic for swathes of UK solar firms. That’s why it’s vital we speak up now, before the changes are approved in early 2017.

Official figures show the installation of rooftop solar projects has collapsed

In the USA, Trump sets up a fight with growing solar industry

In the USA, Trump’s new climate-sceptic Attorney General, one Scott Pruitt, poses the same kind of threat to the booming US solar industry. The US solar just reported its biggest year to date during 2016, as new installations approached 15GW for the first time (in the UK we installed just over 1GW, see graph, half of the 2105 figure). Now in the USA, over 260,000 people work in over 9,000 solar businesses. By 2021, the number is forecast to reach 360,000 workers.

Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt has been sworn in as head of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) after the US Senate voted 52-46 in favour of approving President Trump’s controversial nominee.

Pruitt, a climate sceptic and long-time adversary of the EPA, is widely expected to use his tenure to try to roll back many key environmental policies implemented at the EPA during the Obama administration, including calling time on President Obama’s flagship climate policy, the Clean Power Plan.